“Stop, you’ll make me blush.”
Jones drew closer and leaned in so that his head and shoulders nearly filled the window. “We are politely asking that you stay away from the Wingos. They’re going through a lot right now. They don’t need this sort of distraction.”
“So how were you made aware of our involvement?” asked Michelle.
“The Army has lots of resources.”
“Do you do this for all the families that have lost service members?”
“No, just for the ones who have people like you trying to mess with their lives at a particularly tragic point. Fortunately, not that many stoop so low.”
“That’s your opinion, and for the record it’s the wrong one,” Michelle said firmly.
“His father was KIA. He was notified of that fact. I don’t know what he asked you to do, but whatever it was, you shouldn’t have accepted. In my book you’re just taking advantage of a heartbroken boy. Maybe you’re doing it to make a few bucks, or scoring some points somehow with someone. Maybe you’re doing it because you feel sorry for him. I don’t know and I don’t really care. But what I do care about is that you leave this family alone so they can grieve properly and get through this in one piece.” He paused and said, “Did I deliver the message clearly, Ms. Maxwell?”
“Crystal clear, Captain Jones.”
He spun on his heel and walked back to his sedan. Ten seconds later he was gone.
Michelle sat in her truck tapping the steering wheel with her fingers as she thought this through. Military police watching. Military police delivering a message. Stay away from the Wingos. They must have already talked to Tyler. Perhaps they were monitoring his phone, saw the meeting set up, and went directly to him. That could explain his sudden decision to have her and Sean stand down.
She called Sean and told him what had just happened.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Jones sounded legit, but maybe all they told him was what he needed to know to deliver the message loud and clear.”
“Well, coupled with the stone wall I got at the Pentagon I’m coming down on the side of this starting to look really suspicious. The question now is what do we do about it?”
“We still have the German Mauser to take back.”
“Michelle, they’ll be watching the Wingos’ house. They see us pull up, the next visit we get will not be from an MP delivering a polite if tough message.”
“It’s not like they’re going to waterboard us, Sean.”
“There are worse things than waterboarding.”
“Name one.”
“Maiming? Death?”
“Come on, this is our government we’re talking about. And I can’t leave it like this. And I don’t think you can either. Tyler is holding something back. I really believe he needs our help, but he’s been warned off too. I doubt even the Army can afford to have its personnel wait in snowy parking lots to dress down somebody they think might be taking advantage of a slain service member’s family.”
“I know. Something is off, way off.”
“But you’re right about the Army fence around the Wingos now. We go there, it won’t be pleasant. So what other angle can we attack this thing from?”
“Well, if we can’t get to Tyler right now, we can dig into his dad’s background. Tyler said he worked at a company called DTI in Reston. We can start there.”
“But if we go there, the Army will probably find out.”
“We don’t have to go there. There’s this thing called the Internet. It has lots of information you can access from a computer. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“Okay, you go tap your little keys. I’m going to do some real detective work.”
Michelle was staring back up at the Panera.
He said, “Like what? I don’t want you to go off half-cocked. Finesse is needed here. Not the Charge of the Light Brigade. And didn’t they get wiped out to a man?”